An Improved Bacterial Foraging Optimization with Differential and Poisson Distribution Strategy and its Application to Nurse Scheduling Problem

Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) has been predominately applied to some real-world problems, but this method has poor convergence speed over complex optimization problems. In this paper, an improved Bacterial Foraging Optimization with Differential and Poisson Distribution strategies (PDBFO) is proposed to promote the insufficiency of BFO. In PDBFO, the step size of bacteria is segmented and adjusted in accordance with fitness value to accelerate convergence and enhance the search capability. Moreover, the differential operator and the Poisson Distribution strategy are incorporated to enrich individual diversity, which prevents algorithm from being trapped in the local optimum. Experimental simulations on eleven benchmark functions demonstrate that the proposed PDBFO has better convergence behavior in comparison to other six algorithms. Additionally, to verify the effectiveness of the method in solving the real-world complex problems, the PDBFO is also applied to the Nurse Scheduling Problem (NSP). Results indicate that the proposed PDBFO is more effective in obtaining the optimal solutions by comparing with other algorithms.